ABSTRACT
The past two decades have witnessed substantial progress in our understanding of the pathogenesis of multiple sclerosis (MS), an improvement in our ability to diagnose the disease and monitor its course and the emergence of MS as a treatable neurological disease. Nevertheless, the development of effective treatments for MS has been impeded by several characteristics of the disease. The purpose of this chapter is to discuss the aspects of MS that impact on the development of new disease therapies, the design of clinical trials to test these candidate therapies and the application of the results of these studies to routine patient care.
